Lanka Solidarity joins the call for the public release of the recent report by the United Nations Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka, which was provided to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon earlier this week.
The Panel of Experts has provided the only comprehensive international inquiry into the brutal end of Sri Lanka’s long civil war in 2009. Up to 40,000 civilians—and by some accounts, many more—were killed in the final months of the war, and credible and consistent allegations of war crimes committed by both the Government’s forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have emerged in the war’s aftermath. The Government of Sri Lanka has resisted calls for an independent, impartial inquiry into these allegations, establishing instead the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The Government has presented the LLRC as evidence of its commitment to accountability for violations committed during the war, and argues that this precludes the need for other processes of investigation and accountability. However, the LLRC has a limited mandate: it examines only the period 2002-2009, has unclear investigative powers, and has failed to be a transparent or impartial process. The LLRC is expected to compile its final report by mid-May, although it is not required to release this report publicly.
The U.N. Panel of Experts currently provides the only meaningful independent and impartial process of documenting and investigating war crimes and other serious violations of international law committed in Sri Lanka. Its physical and political distance from Sri Lanka has been used by the Government of Sri Lanka to impugn its legitimacy; however, it is precisely this distance that lends the advisory panel credibility with those communities that bore the brunt of the violations, and whose engagement will be required for peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan government has dismissed the U.N. experts’ report, stating that its findings are “biased” and “fundamentally flawed.” In much the same way that government spokespersons denied that war crimes were committed before any formal inquiry into the conduct of the war, they have consistently denounced the U.N. Panel of Experts and impeded its progress. In the face of the government’s assertions, we urge Ban Ki-Moon to make the report public, so that its data and conclusions may be given the scrutiny they clearly require. We believe Sri Lanka’s LLRC should follow suit in making its findings available and subject to examination by the public.
Lanka Solidarity believes that these moves toward transparency are a necessary first step toward accountability, justice and reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka.
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